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World Tour 2016

Was there a coup in Brazil?

Yes. The trivial and fabricated charges against President Rousseff were that she used state-controlled banks to finance popular social programs. Even if this was true, it had no negative effect on anything.

The Wall Street Journalclaims that Rousseff “used bookkeeping maneuvers to mask a perilous budget deficit” — as though a Brazilian deficit could be “perilous.” (The Brazilian government creates its spending money out of thin air.)

Ms. Rousseff (unlike her corrupt accusers) was never charged with corruption, or bribery, or theft, etc. — but because of the coup, she has been expelled from office for up to six months, which is more than enough time for her enemies to establish conditions that will prevent her and the Workers Party from ever returning to power. Even her opponents acknowledge that Roussef is one of the least corrupt politicians in Brazil.

Brazil will now shift farther to the right than any time since the military dictatorship. The vote in the Senate was 55 corrupt politicians under investigation vs. 22.

Why did it happen?

The coup served two functions.

[1] It will replace the center-leftist Workers Party with a radically neoliberal regime that is in bed with Washington and Wall Street. Most of the people in the new cabinet have positions with firms like Goldman Sachs.

[2] The coup will stop the investigations. More than half of the Brazilian congress is under investigation for massive corruption. Many politicians have already been convicted. In order to stop the investigations, the politicians and the corporate media outlets falsely blamed everything on President Rousseff, while creating the illusion that a purge of Rousseff would be a purge of corruption.

Now that Ms. Rousseff has been deposed, the corporate media outlets will become silent about the corruption. Meanwhile the politicians, backed by the money powers, will bribe or threaten all judges into silence. The entire gigantic corruption fiasco will vanish as though it never existed. Politicians, now off the hook, will be free to continue their crimes. The public will focus on the summer Olympics. Poverty and inequality will become worse than ever. It will be business as usual.

Why did it happen now?

The global recession reduced global demand for Brazilian raw materials, thereby causing a Brazilian recession, which made average Brazilians (especially in the middle class) very unhappy. Meanwhile Eduardo da Cunha (the notoriously corrupt leader of the lower house of congress) had finally run out of tricks to avoid being charged with crimes. Mr. Cunha had pocketed countless millions in bribes, and he hid the loot in Swiss bank accounts, but he told a congressional committee that he had no overseas accounts. When Mr. Cunha’s most recent lies were exposed, he started demanding a coup against Rousseff in order to divert attention away from himself — as did many other politicians who were under investigation.

Mr. Cunha and his neoliberal masters (who own the corporate media outlets) channeled public unhappiness (caused by the recession) toward President Rousseff and the Workers Party. The criminals and the media outlets falsely claimed that Rousseff was to blame for the recession and the corruption.

As always, the stupid masses took the bait and started demanding a coup, even though they don’t know what Rousseff is (falsely) accused of. The politicians and their owners had whipped the mob into a mindless frenzy, and the mob wanted a scapegoat.

Meanwhile the Workers Party lost the support of the lower classes. Many politicians in the Workers Party participated in the corruption, and they made backroom deals with the rich neoliberals. They also failed to do anything about the recession and the unemployment.

The Workers Party had struggled for years to get into power, and when they finally succeeded, they became lazy and careless, and in many cases corrupt. They also underestimated the greed and the evil of the rich neoliberals, who never rest. (These same foibles characterize most Leftist movements when they finally get power. They often become lazy. Sometimes they become as corrupt as the right-wing elitists.)

Dilma Rousseff stupidly contributed to her own demise by appointing the ultra-neo-liberal Joaquim Levy as her Finance Minister. Mr. Levy (who is one of the “Chosen”) had been head of Brazil’s second largest bank. As finance minister he convinced President Rousseff that economic conditions would improve if Mr. Levy could impose gratuitous austerity on the masses. Naturally the austerity caused economic conditions to become much worse. This, plus the recession, ignited a blaze of social discontent, which the elitists and the politicians fanned and exploited. It was all part of a neoliberal plan to get rid of the Workers Party.

Within twelve months of Mr. Levy’s austerity, the masses were calling for Rousseff’s head. Mr. Levy, having accomplished his neoliberal mission, departed on 11 Jan 2016 to become the Chief Financial Officer for the World Bank, where he can spread his evil on an international scale.

What will happen next?

The new president, Michel Temer, is a neoliberal ideologue. (Married three times, Temer’s latest wife is former model who is 40 years younger than him.) Temer’s rich owners will placate the mob by throwing them a few politicians, perhaps including Eduardo da Cunha, the nefarious speaker of the house who began the impeachment process. (Mr. Cunha will desperately beg for help from his friend, President Temer, to no avail. Mr. Cunha will have to fall on his sword.)

For the rest of the criminal politicians, the corruption investigation will vanish as though it never happened.

Temer will enact trivial and meaningless reforms that will temporarily placate the peasants, thereby preparing them to be impoverished and enslaved as never before. There will be mass privatizations, mass layoffs, mass pension cuts, mass financial crimes, and a mass overturning of labor laws. There will also be mass increases in unemployment, inequality and police brutality.

In short, Brazil will become like the rest of the world.

Brazil and Argentina will now adopt the TPP “free trade” treaty. (Peru and Mexico already have.)

Next stop: Venezuela. Then Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. (The rest of Latin America is already in the bag.)

Yeah, I liked this one. Obviously due to the time constraints, Wray is direct and to the point. Sometimes he’s just too wordy and rambling, as on the NEP blog. Like you say, if a child can’t understand it, then it’s bullshit.

One problem for the neoliberals is that Correa has the highest public approval rating of any Latin American president (although Correa is despised by the rich). Thus, the neoliberals may simply wait Correa out. The next Presidential election will be in February 2017, and Correa has already said that he will not run again for re-election. He said it in Nov 2015.

No it will not be possible, I think that when Correa is gone, Ecuador will revert to neoliberalism.

South America became a decent place to live after World War II, but a series of U.S.-sponsored coups in the 1960s changed the Latin economy so that it became based on exporting raw materials, such as oil and iron ore. That’s okay when there is great international demand for raw materials, since exporting the items allows nations to get foreign currencies with which to buy imports. However this leads to an over-dependency on those imports. When you can easily get foreign currency, you don’t worry about being self-sufficient. You buy imports. About 98 percent of Venezuela’s exports consist of oil, iron, and aluminum. About 86 percent of Ecuador’s exports are oil, bananas, and flowers. In Bolivia, 72 percent of exports are oil, copper, and zinc. In Argentina, nearly 70 percent of export income is derived from commodities, mostly soybeans.

Again, this is okay when foreign demand is high, but if the demand falls, there are recessions. Plus there is a reduction in imports, which causes scarcities in consumer goods, which causes inflation. The solution is to diversify the economy, but recessions allow neoliberals to quickly seize power, and restore slavery. That’s what’s happening now.

The leftist leaders knew they would remain vulnerable if they did not diversify their economies, but they were caught up in the euphoria of finally being able to tell the rich neoliberals to drop dead. Also, when money is rolling in (i.e. foreign currencies) it becomes easy to say, “We’ll diversify the economy tomorrow.”

Between 1997 and 2013, the surging Chinese demand (plus the U.S. preoccupation with destroying the Middle East) allowed Leftist leaders to lift millions of people out of poverty in Latin America. However when China’s economy cooled, and commodity prices fell, South America found itself with little to sell on global markets.

The neoliberals saw their chance, and attacked.

They own the newspapers, and they control what the masses think. They present neoliberalism as “continuity with change.” This is an illogical contradiction, but the stupid masses buy it, no matter how many times the masses have been burned before.

But wait…if the demand for commodities is down, then how will the Latin American neoliberals increase their vast wealth?

[1] Through privatization. The essence of neoliberalism is privatization, in which a handful of people own everything, and everyone else is their slaves.

[2] The neoliberals depress wages, slash benefits, and get endless government bailouts. When populists are in power, the government is said to be “broke.” When neoliberals are in power, there is infinite money for whatever the neoliberals want to do. Corporate subsidies? No problem. Trillion-dollar bailouts of banks? You got it. Wars to boost the profits of weapons makers? Here you go.

Ecuador is experiencing a recession, just like the rest of the planet. Ecuador too will fall. Correa in Ecuador is as despised by the rich as is Maduro is in Venezuela. When Ecuador falls next year, the foreign oil companies will move back in and resume polluting.

In May 2006 Occidental Petroleum sued Ecuador $3.37 billion for breach of contract when Correa would not let them pollute a wildlife preserve in the Amazon region. The World Bank ordered Ecuador to pay $1.8 billion (plus interest) to Occidental. Ecuador’s new neoliberal government (next year) will pay this fine at taxpayers’ expense, just as Argentina’s new neoliberal government paid $4.7 billion to billionaire vulture fund manager Paul Singer, who made a 746% profit.

On 19 April 2016 Argentina’s new neoliberal president, Maricio Macri, sold $16.5 billion worth of sovereign bonds, in part to pay off Singer. Macri is now using this debt as a pretext to impose severe austerity on the masses. The previous government refused to indebt the nation like this.

Macri is focused on bringing Argentina back under the heel of Wall Street.

As I see it, the leftist era in Latin America is over. The world is in a permanent depression because the financial economy is a deadly parasite in the real economy, sucking all human energy.